Event Title

Presenter Information

Mentor 1

Gerlinde Hoebel

Location

Union Wisconsin Room

Start Date

29-4-2016 1:30 PM

End Date

29-4-2016 3:30 PM

Description

Female treefrogs discriminate against overlapped calls, and males avoid overlapping calls with their neighbors. In natural choruses, so many rivals may call at the same time that males cannot avoid call overlap with all of them. Males may solve this dilemma by selective attention, i.e., by avoiding call overlap with only a subset of rivals. The selective attention hypothesis predicts that that if males are only confronted with one rival, irrespective of his attractiveness, they should avoid call overlap with this rival. However, if confronted with several rivals, males should avoid call overlap with the more attractive rival, but largely disregard the unattractive one. We tested this hypothesis by conducting playback experiments with male green treefrogs, broadcasting either calls of (i) one unattractive rival, those of (ii) one attractive rival, or (iii) a mixed playback of both attractive and unattractive rivals. As predicted by the selective attention hypothesis, males avoided call overlap more strongly with calls of attractive rivals.

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Apr 29th, 1:30 PMApr 29th, 3:30 PM

Selective Attention in Call Overlap Avoidance in Green Treefrogs

Union Wisconsin Room

Female treefrogs discriminate against overlapped calls, and males avoid overlapping calls with their neighbors. In natural choruses, so many rivals may call at the same time that males cannot avoid call overlap with all of them. Males may solve this dilemma by selective attention, i.e., by avoiding call overlap with only a subset of rivals. The selective attention hypothesis predicts that that if males are only confronted with one rival, irrespective of his attractiveness, they should avoid call overlap with this rival. However, if confronted with several rivals, males should avoid call overlap with the more attractive rival, but largely disregard the unattractive one. We tested this hypothesis by conducting playback experiments with male green treefrogs, broadcasting either calls of (i) one unattractive rival, those of (ii) one attractive rival, or (iii) a mixed playback of both attractive and unattractive rivals. As predicted by the selective attention hypothesis, males avoided call overlap more strongly with calls of attractive rivals.